Went riding last Sunday and found a great waterhole. Totally murky, bottom was pretty gooey. The guy I was riding with said it was my turn to go first. That's still being debated, but he may have been right. Don't tell him I said that.

So, I go partway through this small ocean, then cut out the side. He laughs, calls me names, makes fun of my goofy hat, says things about my mommy, and tells me I have to go ALL the way through. *sigh* How can you back down from that?

So around I go again and begin CREEPING down into the water. In go the tires, rims, center hubs, fenders, headlights ...

At this point, we're not really positive what happened. From my perspective, it seems that the whole friggin PLANET suddenly dropped out from under me. Blub blub, bob bob, goes the Rincon. I won't repeat the hysterical babbling that was spewing from my mouth. You can guess.

Anyway, the quad finally came to rest with one front tire on something resembing earth, the other three happily bobbing around in the water, or so it felt. The whole thing was just swaying and moving around as I sat perched on my rear rack bag with my feet up on the handlebars.

Oh yeah, the engine had died long before this.

So there I was, crouching atop my own lil Titanic, trying to figure out my next step. Wait! I have a WINCH!!!

One of my other riding partners waded out (he was already mudded up - it was his turn to go first last time), grabbed my hook, and connected it to another quad. Short story, I'm REALLY glad winches work underwater. Heck, I'm glad it worked at all. This was its first real-life trial.

So we got the machine out and, of course, it wouldn't start. Opened up the airbox which contained maybe 1/8" of water. No problem there, but left it open anyway. Snorkel looked surprisingly dry. Pulled the choke and tried again. It finally bit, but touching the throttle would kill it. We let it high-idle for about 10 minutes watching the water gurgle and spew out of the tailpipe. Looked like the nastiest garden hose you can imagine. Ever see The Money Pit with Tom hanks? Remember the bathtub? Yeah, there ya go, now you've got it.

After a while, the throttle began behaving more normally. By this point there was a HUGE amount of smoke pouring from the tail. Thought maybe it was, what, burning oil? Nope. Steam. It was boiling the water inside tailpipe and happily spouting the result out its rear end. Think maybe I coulda powered a small steam engine with that. We'll try that later.

Anyway, machine's fine now. Needs a LOT of cleaning, but otherwise in great shape. Amazing.

Unfortunately, no pictures. The only camera was in the rack bag that I happened to be sitting on. Had I thought to make the effort to get it out and hand it over to one of the other guys, there would likely STILL be no pictures. There would certainly, however, be another paragraph in my post about how my camera is now at the bottom of said water hole.

 

Be sure to check the oil and all the fluids to make sure none got in!!!
The oil will look like milk if it did.
Otherwise, great little adventure you had there!
~Tim

 

Man thats crazy, is that something a lot of people do? daggone brand new rincon lol man i wish i had one

 

Been there, done that and got the T-shirt. You take a chance trying to start an engine that has been flooded in water. Being that water is a non-compressible liquid, it will easily bend a valve stem once the piston hits the compression stroke. The FIRST thing you should do (you may have done this but did not mention it) is remove the spark plug and blow out any water that may have found it's way into the combustion chamber. Next, remove the drain screw from the carburator bowl. That is why your engine would not rev up and blew white smoke as it burned off the gas and water mixture. While the oil and water mix is not good for the rest of the engine, it will not cause major damage if you only need to go a mile or two.

 

I drove into a deep hole in a creek the second time out with my Rincon. Not a good feeling dude. I can relate. Mine huffed and puffed and blew smoke once we finally got it out and didn't regain full power until my buddies pulled me about a half mile or so. I didn't know about all the cool tricks that these other guys just suggested so I just drove it until it started working again. Kinda like rebooting your pc until it does right. :-) That was a couple months ago and I'm still rolling strong. I think maybe we should put depth finders on our next xmas list. kekeke.

 

damn that sounds familiar!

you're quite a commical story teller to, I might say